Council Approves West Hartford's Election Emergency Plan

West Hartford now has an "Emergency Election Plan" in place to deal with contingencies ranging from lockdowns in polling place to long lines for voting.

All Connecticut municipalities are required by a legislative statue passed in 2011 to either come up with their own plan or adopt a model plan developed by the Secretary of State, said Deputy Corporation Council Pat Alair who presented the resolution at Tuesday night's Town Council meeting. Thursday was the deadline, he said.

The impetus for developing a plan for each municipality was the freak October snowstorm in 2011, which occurred just 10 days before the November elections and required last minute changes to polling places due to continued power outages. West Hartford was able to utilize all of its regular polling places in 2011.

The idea is to have a plan that "each moderator, each registrar will have and the poll workers will be familiar with," Alair said. It will eliminate judgment from the decision about what to do in various scenarios, and also requires backup poll workers to be available if needed.

“I think what we have here is a very good comprehensive document that we can work on and continue to update,” Alair said.

Mayor Scott Slifka praised the work that Alair and Registrar of Voters Dr. Carolyn Thornberry did to modify the state's model plan. “It has been tailored to our purpose,” Slifka said.

Minority Leader Denise Hall said that the document will "help us move to the next step with procedures that affect those issues."

A procedure for dealing with long lines at polling places, which West Hartford's plan defines as lines in excess of 30 minutes, has been included, Alair said. During the 2012 presidential election, certain polling places had lengthy wait times and additional workers had to be brought in.

Although the plan, detailed in the above PDF, was adopted unanimously, it is still a work in progress and the committee will continue to meet and refine it, Slifka said.